What:
State College International Market at 328 S. Allen Street. Owned by: Jin and her husband, who are from Eastern Beijing, but moved to America 25 years ago. Jin: “The market has been here over 30 years. We’ve only owned it since last September. We didn’t plan on owning it. We just wanted to buy the apartment above it so we could rent out the space, but we couldn’t buy the apartment without the market, too. We decided we’d accept that deal because we really wanted this property… it comes with parking. Now we enjoy running the market.” Types of food: Jin: “We have Middle Eastern, African, Indian, Asian… so everything.” Me: “The whole world?” Jin: “Yeah. The whole world.” Top selling items: Jin: “NOODLES! Noodles, noodles, noodles.” One thing Jin wants people to know: “If you want something from our market and we don’t have it, we’ll try our best to order it and get it to the store for you.” One more thing Jin wants people to know: “We have quite a few frozen foods! People don’t seem to know that. We have them and they are ready to be cooked.” Thoughts from Khaled, an International Market customer who I respectfully stalked in the store and even made pose for a candid picture with Jin, which is not only available for viewing in the photo gallery that accompanies this piece, but is also not a true candid because I asked him to pose like a cool customer in it: “I’m Arab so I buy Arab food here— beans, breads, spices, deserts… like kunafa. That’s a desert with thin noodles. Google it.” (I Googled it. It’s a desert with thin noodles.) “I’ve been coming here for a while because the food I want is hard to find at big stores like Walmart. They [the owners] do a good job with this place.”
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